Unequivocal Equivocation – an open letter to Dr. Trenberth

A must-read essay for everyone...

The “null hypothesis” in science is the condition that would result if what you are trying to establish is not true. For example, if your hypothesis is that air pressure affects plant growth rates, the null hypothesis is that air pressure has no effect on plant growth rates. Once you have both hypotheses, then you can see which hypothesis is supported by the evidence.

UPDATE: I just sent the above essay to the Climate Change wing of our university, and told them, in no uncertain terms, to get a reality check and stop wasting our tuition fees. I will post their reply when and if I get it.

BBC rapes science reporting again, again and again...

H/T EU Referendum

I hope you will excuse me for being so late in jumping on the posting-bandwagon on this one. Now I think I am fairly well placed to comment on sciency issues, that is after all what I am studying. There will be a lot of professors popping up in the above video and there are a few things to note about the term and title of 'professor'.

You do not have to agree with them because of their position but you sure as hell will respect them. I told our economics lecturer that his entire discipline was pure bullshit in my opinion in my first year of university - but that was only my opinion. If people want to be stupid enough to study something so profoundly boring as economics then you must respect them for that (see; another opinion). Now professors will also have opinions, lo and behold, and they are not paragons of impartial reporting. They like every other human being have built-in bias that they cannot avoid for one reason or another.

With these professors above you are allowed to disagree, equally for those who propagate AGW as a leading truth you are also allowed to disagree and question. This is key; you must question. Do not ever take anything the MSM says as a given truth. It is not. There is far more to anything than one article, and even if you get a thousand, even a hundred thousand articles saying that the glaciers are going to melt in 10 years time that does not make it true. They are only writing what someone else with an intent has told them. Millions upon millions of pieces were written on the supposed Y2K crash of year 2000, that was supposedly going to wipe out the entire global computer network. That did not happen. Of course there was a small band of informed people who said it would not happen but no one listened to them. When they euro was introduced there was a small band of people who said that you cannot have fiscal union without political union for that would lead to a market crash. And look what happened to that; they were ignored as per usual by the media.

Whatever someone says have an autonomous mind. Professors do not know everything and they have opinions like anyone else, and they are highly conscious of getting their work published. Some by any means necessary. Academia is not some abstract castle of infinite good will, the truth is far far more depressing.

Not a revolutionary prospect but close

You read it here first, a long time ago actually, but the next election will be the election of the so called "fringe". Only difference of course is that the fringe is not longer the perpetrators of the right or the left, they will be the flag-bearers of the left and the right. Why? Because no other political parties do; they have no colours to nail to the mast and no defining streak which sets them apart from the other in the majestic political landscape (notice the sarcastic hyperbole), they are to all intents and purposes 'centre'. Not 'centre-right' or 'centre-left' but bang, slap, middle of the bar, is where most mainstream political parties have set up camp today, and guess what, I reckon that voters will realise this too a much larger extent once the next election creeps closer. Consider why:

Have we had reduced immigration? No

Have we repatriated power from Brussels? No

Is the defence budget being slashed in the middle of a war? Yes

Can gypsies still set up camp wherever they want? Yes

Is the Human Rights Act going away? No

Is health and safety madness still prevalent? Yes

Is political correctness madness still prevalent? Yes

Are the trains and bus-services still too expensive? Yes

Is Britain still being sold off; lock stock and barrel? Yes

Are the pubs still dying? Yes

Is religious insensitivity to every single fucking thing, still clogging the news? Yes

Is there still too much red-tape? Yes

Are the righteous still preaching 24-7 how we should live our lives? Yes

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Now consider why nothing has happened with these rather large issues, it has to with political ideology or maybe it just has to do with vested interests - personally I think it has to with principles or lack thereof rather:

New Labour: Centre-left

Conservatives: Centre-right

Liberal Democrats: Centre-left

The Green Party: useless and pointless

BNP: Left

UKIP: Right

SNP: Centre-left

Now this is what I think is going to happen come the next election. People who at this election were on the verge of not voting for either LibDems, the Tories or Labour wont be on that note again. This time it is abundantly clear that all of their parties have moved away from their traditional ground and into the centre where, as this post so fragrantly demonstrates, everyone hates them particularly those us with a very firm set of principles, and that pretty much entails the entire blogosphere.

The Tories will most likely loose a lot of votes to UKIP because after 13 years in opposition and perhaps two or three in government it is as clear as daylight that they do not espouse right-wing policies. A lot of working class voters will probably shift to the BNP because of 13 years in government they were completely ignored and their two or three in opposition was an abject failure and a complete waste of everyone's time, because they are trying to defend the most abysmal mandate period in British political history. They have not yet succeeded in that goal and if anything it will turn into a pyrrhic victory if they do, but then the party at large will probably disappear as well. Here comes the interesting part; a lot of LibDem voters wont know what to do with themselves. They are at face value left leaning people who were not completely convinced by Labour but they have also come to realise that neither their party nor their most obvious successor, Labour, are going to serve as a reasonable substitute for their vote. Who they go for instead is anyone's guess but probably some really weird party like Socialist Alternative or Trade Unionist & Socialist.

And such is my thesis (and has been for about 1.5 years now, remember you read it here first); The election that really counts was not the one past, but the one we are about to have sometime in the next 4 years.

James Delingpole the attack dog - love it!

Are there really no depths to which ManBearPig-worshippers will not stoop in order to shore up their intellectually, morally and scientifically bankrupt cause?

Apparently not, as we see from the latest “study” – based on a petty, spiteful, Stasi-like blacklist produced by an obscure Canadian warmist – outrageously aggrandised by being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

The study examined 1,372 scientists who had taken part in reviews of climate science or had put their name to statements regarding the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Scientists were grouped as “convinced” or “unconvinced”, and researchers examined how many times they had published papers on the climate.

The results showed that “unconvinced” scientists accounted for just three of the 100 most prolific authors on the subject, while papers by “convinced” scientists were more frequently cited in other research.

Well, no s***, Sherlock. And might this have anything to do, perchance, with the fact that – as the Climategate emails made abundantly clear – “unconvinced” scientists were deliberately shut out of the peer-review process by the “convinced” ones?

And how many scientists, with bachelor of science degrees or higher, have signed the Oregon Petition expressing doubts about Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)? 31,000 plus.

And how many of the supposed 2500 climate scientists responsible for the IPCC “consensus” were actively involved in the sections to do with AGW? 53.

And how many scientists does it require to successfully falsify – ie prove wrong – a shabby, tired old theory like “Phlogiston”, or “Geocentrism”, or “Dangerous, unprecedented Man Made Global Warming?” One.

But guess how BBC Radio 4 reported the story this morning? Yep. “98 per cent of scientists support global warming theory.” (Hat tip: Nick Mabbs)

Then again, since when did we expect any kind of honesty or decency from the Warmists? Have a look, for example, at this great analysis by the National Post’s Lawrence Solomon on how Warmist propagandists are using their useful idiots in the MSM to exaggerate the level of public credulousness in AGW.

In a New York Times op-ed, which has been much crowed-over by warmists, a Stanford university professor called Krosnick argued that – contrary to the impression given by every other opinion poll in the last three years – the majority of the US public is fully behind measures to ruin their economy in the name of combatting climate change.

In our survey, which was financed by a grant to Stanford from the National Science Foundation, 1,000 randomly selected American adults were interviewed by phone between June 1 and Monday. When respondents were asked if they thought that the earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74 percent answered affirmatively. And 75 percent of respondents said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred.

For many issues, any such consensus about the existence of a problem quickly falls apart when the conversation turns to carrying out specific solutions that will be costly. But not so here.

Fully 86 percent of our respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limiting business’s emissions of greenhouse gases in particular. Not a majority of 55 or 60 percent — but 76 percent.

Solomon explains here how Krosnick rigs his questions in order to “hide the decline” in public support for AGW lunacy.

The best question of all, Krosnick found, came from adding an assumption of pessimism:” What do you think will be the most serious problem facing the world in the future if nothing is done to stop it?” When put this way, 25% of the public responded with “Global warming/the environment.” Krosnick doesn’t tell us how many of that 25% choose global warming versus the myriad of other environmental issues, such as air pollution, food and drinking water safety, wildlife and species protection, farmland or woodlands protection.

Krosnick recommends that pollsters ask his 25% question, believing it will obtain a result more useful for policy makers. He also chastises the press for interviewing global warming sceptics along with global warming advocates, saying this creates in the public mind the impression that the science is not settled on global warming. 6% of articles on global warming last year included the views of sceptics, a percentage Krosnick evidently views as too high.

Krosnick gets different results than other pollsters do by asking questions that some might consider bizarre. For example, when people told him that they didn’t believe global warming was happening, he asked them to pretend they did by asking them, “Assuming that global warming is happening, do you think a rise in the world’s temperature would be caused mostly by things people do, mostly by natural causes, or about equally by things people do and by natural causes? He then lumped the pretend response from people who don’t believe in global warming with a similar question asked of people who weren’t pretending about their belief in global warming. The result of the merger of these two groups was: 30% blame global warming on humans, 25% blame global warming on natural causes, and 45% believe humans and natural causes are about equally to blame. In the New York Times oped, Krosnick summarized this finding by pretenders and believers as “75% of respondents said that human behaviour was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred,” even though many of those 75% didn’t believe that global warming was happening at all.

So when dealing with the Warmist lobby, always remember these helpful tips: sup with a long spoon, know that they’re lying from the fact that their lips are moving, and when they leave, make sure to count your fingers and your silverware.

Milk Politics

Do you remember the Milk Rounds or the School Milk (in all honesty yours truly was not born when this was around)? Well this is another one of those areas where the country has gone completely bonkers.

Consider what we now get our milk in: awful environmentally hazardous plastic cartridges that have to be thrown out once they have been used. This of course is counter productive as the damned things are made of plastic i.e. oil and have to be burned and thus releasing all those nasty gases the Green lobby keeps banging on about.

Well they have not done anything about it at all to be quite honest. But before we get to the Milk rounds lets have a look at what some food chains are in fact offering. Tesco have nothing but the plastic gear which is utterly useless particularly if you throw out the damned thing with the lid screwed tight. Some councils now employ people-this is not a joke-whose soul purpose is to pop the cartons so as to free some space in the bins. The same story is true for most of the big stores except Sainsbury's and Waitrose. They have in their larger supermarkets started using bags of milk (see picture). Even the bags themselves are recyclable which is always good. But obviously the main benefit comes from not having a physical carton which you have to smash with your bare knuckles in order for the damned thing to become somewhat 'flat'. Other benefits include saving plastic and spending that oil on say better gear for soldiers.

Sainsbury's claim that the only way to open the bag, without ending up covered in milk, is to place the bag inside the jug and shut the lid. A spike then pierces the bag releasing the milk. Your humble narrator can comfort the dear reader that this is all complete bollocks. You do not need a special jug. You need a jug but not a special Sainsbury's jug, and a pair of scissors. Cut of a corner and pour the bloody milk into the jug. It is not rocket science.

It is a bit odd that it only arrived in the UK about a year ago; you can only buy milk in bags in Canada. They do not sell it in any other form (well supposedly 60% is sold in bag form but I never saw anything but bag milk). Which begs the question; why are they intent on destroying the country side when they might as well just outlaw any packaging which does not necessarily have to be made from the most inconvenient of materials? Do you really need cereal in a carton, is not the bag enough? And so on. Not wishing to be a mouth piece for the Green lobby, for I truly despise the lot of them for their inconsistent and deceitful ways, but we do need to reconsider the way we pack things at least to save material.

But now the more pressing of questions: Why the fuck have they let the Milk Rounds fall into despair when it was probably the most environmentally friendly way of delivering fresh, cheap, locally produced, milk? Bear in mind that companies like Lidl insist on their milk being sent from bloody Germany to all its stores in Europe. I.e. the milk you buy from Lidl is not even by any stretch of the imagination 'local'. The Milk Rounds used and use glass bottles (as you will know by now that glass is 100% recyclable) and the vehicles they spin around in are driven by electricity.

This is not to say that the industry is dead - far from it. From the website Findmeamilkman.net we have it that (my emphasis)

"The UK’s 9,500 milkmen and women deliver to around 5 million homes every day. Whilst fresh liquid milk in environmentally friendly returnable glass milk bottles remains the cornerstone of this service, your milkman can also offer a large range of other goods. They will be more than happy to discuss the range of products that can be delivered regularly to your doorstep."

Now a normal person in the UK consumes roughly 2 litres or 3.5 pints of milk each week. This is a fair amount of milk. But one must wonder why are only 5 million homes in the UK getting their milk from this service which ought to be the Emperors of the milk trade (and media and government policy) in the UK, yet are not. A decade ago, more than 2.5 billion litres of milk were being delivered to the doorstep each year, which by 2004 had fallen to 637 million. Only 13% of the milk now consumed at home comes from delivery rounds (2006).

We can get pretty nostalgic about our doorstep milk deliveries. After all, there can’t be many countries that have had a record at number one in the singles chart about a milkman. Comedian Benny Hill’s record Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West) topped the charts in 1971 for five solid weeks. Before the milk float, milk was delivered on wheeled carts – either horse-drawn or simply pushed. The milk was in a churn before the advent of the milk bottle and the milkman poured it into the jugs his customers left on their doorsteps. A cloth cover over the jug protected the milk from flies.

The early morning chink-chink of the milkman or woman and the hum of the electric float is declining in 21st-century England though – despite efforts to extend the range of products on offer to include eggs, bread, juice and more. Despite rumours to the contrary, there is no threat to UK milk deliveries from the European Union - yet. However as we move further into this century it appears that the trend is being reversed because people are starting to realise what this article has been arguing that there is simply no way in which supermarket-milk beats Milkman-milk. As such it is becoming more popular again and it is only a question of time before an MP of one ilk or another seizes upon this issue to include it in their portfolio of "green policies".

Instead of building expensive fucking "eco-towns" perhaps we ought to retrace our steps to a time when people were far more sensible (and greener) than they are now.